Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/218

 maintained with the greatest ability, and the claims of Privilege sustained with no less ability, there arose a proficiency in civil legislation and in the internal and external administration of the State, and an almost perfect comprehension of all the possible expedients by which the laws might be evaded, such as were possessed by no nation before the Romans; so that we ourselves have still much to learn from them in this department.

Here, too, we have Equality of Right secured in the most skilful manner; but as yet no Equal Rights; partly on account of the restless struggles of the Aristocracy, and partly on account of accidental circumstances, which the constitution was unable to remove.

We remarked in a former lecture that the State regards itself as the exclusive realm of Culture, and in this character stands in natural warfare with Barbarism. So long as Humanity received but a one-sided Culture in different States, it was to be expected that each particular State should deem its own Culture the true and only civilization, and regard that of other States as mere Barbarism, and their inhabitants as Savages;—and thus feel itself called upon to subdue them. In this way a war might easily arise between the three great States of the ancient world which we have mentioned; and indeed a real and typical war,—a war of subjugation. In the first place, with respect to the Grecian States;—they at an early period constituted themselves as Greeks,—that is, as a nation united together by definite views of Civic and Political Rights, by a common language, feasts and oracles, and by means of a national confederacy and national Rights universally recognised among themselves,—constituted themselves as Greeks, I say, into a peculiar realm of Culture from which they excluded all other nations under the name of Barbarians. If, notwithstanding this confederacy, they allowed themselves to engage in war with each other, still these wars